I'm in the process of finally leaving a shared house, and purchasing myself a flat all for my very own! Its all very exciting etc etc.

Anyway, I've been giving some thought to what sort of set-up I'd like in the new place 'AV wise'. TBH, probably more thought than all the boring stuff that goes with buying a house.

So I'm on a fairly tight budget, of about £1000 for TV and sound equipment. The living room is big enough for a TV of around 40" I would say.

Now I've a fairly decent PC, with a nice graphics card, and I've been having a play with the excellent XBMC, so am thinking I could just rehouse the PC into a nice HTPC box and base everything around it?

Would this be a good idea you think? Are there any obvious downsides to this that arn't obvious to me, who's a bit thick with all this sort of thing?

I've also thought, that while running a computer on a big screen is great for movies etc, I'm guessing its not so good for general use/certain types of gaming, and that it might be an idea to keep hold of my current monitor, and use that in a corner of the room as well?

If anyone has any thoughts, or links to similar projects I'd appreciate it.